Is Bitcoin Legal?

Is Bitcoin Legal?

Bitcoin, the world’s first decentralized digital currency, is attracting attention across the globe. When acknowledging that it is also the first borderless, apolitical form of money in history, it’s hard to avoid the topic of whether it can be used legally.
Still, this has not stopped countries from trying to restrict the use of bitcoin within their borders. Some countries have made bitcoin entirely illegal, like India, Bolivia and Ecuador. Some of these same countries have also issued their own digital currencies as well. Other countries, like China, have shifted their view on bitcoin, banning and unbanning the currency in various ways over the last few years. As of October 2018, China has restricted digital currencies to private use only, prohibiting all financial institutions from handling any digital currency transactions at all.
The problem with banning something like bitcoin (which cannot be easily censored) from a geographic region is that trying to enforce such a ban is very difficult to do. The most restrictions can do is try to dissuade people from using it by threatening them with some sort of consequences, but they cannot actually prevent people from using it.
But, by and large, it is legal to send, receive, mine and generally use bitcoin in most countries around the world.